Anthropology of the City: The Past and Future of Urban Life
ANTH/ARCHY 469; Autumn 2011
M, W 1:30-3:20; ARC G070

Course Overview

Weekly Schedule

Week 1: Introduction

(W) 09/28: Introductions
Review themes for the course, introduce instructors and students, go over syllabus.

Readings
No readings for first class

Week 2: Contextualizing cities

(M) 10/03: What is a city?
Explore basic definitions of the city and its social dimensions.  We will review film representations of the city as a way to understand different possibilities for thinking about cities in various places and contexts. Go over details of first assignment, due Wednesday (10/05)

Readings
Miéville, China. 2009. The City & the City. New York: Ballantine.
(Read at least parts 1 and 2, through page 238.)

"What is a City?" definition list

(W) 10/05: Why cities?
A look at what we know about the origins of cities and why they exist. We will ask what role urbanity plays in our lives today, and whether that is the same across time and place. 

Readings
Kershner, Isabel. 2011. Elusive Line Defines Lives in Israel and the West Bank. New York Times, September 6, 2011.

Assignment
Write a 1.5 page (double spaced, approximately 350 words) definition of “city”.  Print out and bring to class and be prepared to discuss your ideas. You will turn this in at the end of the class. You do not need to include citations, although you are welcome to do so. This assignment will be graded based on the coherence of your ideas and how well they are presented.

Week 3: Anthropology and the city
            (Note: you might want to check out “Remaking the Metropolis” series of 3 films, at the Northwest Film Forum, various times Oct 7-13)

(M) 10/10: Archaeology and the city
Continue discussion of how and when cities appear and why, with particular attention to how archeologists address these questions. Introduce the methods by which archeologists research cities, and what these can and cannot tell us about cities of the past and the ways they compare to cities of the present.

Readings
Childe, V. Gordon 1950. The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21: 3-17.

Smith, Monica, 2003. Introduction: The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. Smith, Monica, ed., Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp.1 -36.

Miksic John N., 2000. Heterogenetic cities in premodern Southeast Asia. World Archaeology 32(1):107–22.

Peter's powerpoint slides from class today

(W) 10/12: Cultural anthropology and the city
Look at how cultural anthropologists have addressed issues of urban life historically and in the present.  How do we research cities and the many ways that people can inhabit the same city? Many of our examples will be drawn from African examples.  We will also provide topics for the Opinion Paper, draft due on 10/26.

Readings
DeCerteau, Michel. 1985. Practices of Space, On Signs. M. Blonsky, ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 123-145.

Quayson, Ato. 2010. Signs of the Times: Discourse ecologies and street life on Oxford St., Accra, City & Society 22(1): 72-96.

Danny's powerpoint slides from class today

Opinion Paper assignmement details

Week 4: The spiritual city

(M) 10/17: The spiritual city, part 1
Among the key architectural features of many cities are those related to the spiritual worlds of a city’s inhabitants. We will ask just how important this spiritual aspect was to the origins and social and physical structures of ancient cities, and how we might know. We will reserve some time for exam review at the end of class.

Readings
Cowgill, George, 2003. Teotihuacan: Cosmic glories and mundane needs. In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. Smith, Monica, ed. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 37-55.

Hodder, Ian, 2007. Çatalhöyük in the Context of the Middle Eastern Neolithic. Annual Review of Anthropology 36:105–20.

Swenson, Edward R., 2003. Cities of Violence: Sacrifice, Power and Urbanization in the Andes. Journal of Social Archaeology 2003 3: 256.

(W) 10/19: The spiritual city, part 2
We continue our discussion of the spiritual lives of cities and those who inhabit them.  We focus on the social role of religious institutions in city life and in the ways that spiritual communities inhabit urban spaces in new ways.

Readings

Rouse, Carolyn and Janet Hoskins. 2004. Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance, Cultural Anthropology 19(2): 226-249.

Assignment
In-class exam will cover basic theories and terms related to the anthropology of cities and will include multiple choice, fill in the blank, and short answer questions.

Week 5: The money city

(M) 10/24: The money city, part 1
Cities are often described as economic engines.  We begin this week by looking at what this means in the age of modern globalization.  Clarify some of the terms associated with the global economy and the contemporary city, and explore what it means to investigate the social aspects of a city’s economic life.  We will discuss the assignment due on Wednesday.

Readings
Simmel, Georg, 1950. The Metropolis and Mental Life, The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 409-424.

Sassen, Saskia, 2000. The Global City: Strategic Site / New Frontier, American Studies 41: 2/3, 79-95.

Manalansan, Martin, 2005. Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Spatial Politics in the Global City, Social Text 84-85(3-4): 142-155.

(W) 10/26: The money city, part 2
Look at how the economic life of the city becomes part of its foundational logic.  Explore in more detail the argument that trade is what makes the city work.  Ask how we investigate the commercial life of a city and the social stratification that marks the urban experience.  We will also spend time in-class doing peer reviews of the opinion paper assignment, and hand out topics for the Research Paper.

Readings
Pyburn, K. Anne, 2008. Pomp and Circumstance before Belize: Ancient Maya Commerce and the New River Conurbation. In The Ancient City: New perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Joyce Marcus and Jeremy A Sabloff, eds., Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 249–274.

Wall, Diana 1991. Sacred Dinners and Secular Teas: Constructing Domesticity in Mid-19th-Century New York. Historical Archaeology 25(4): 69-81.

Assignment
Bring a print out of your Opinion Paper to class for peer review (click here for details). We'll bring reviewed papers to the Pioneer Square tour on Monday 10/31, or you can pick up your reviewed paper in the Anthropology Offices (Denny Hall mezzanine) beginning on Tuesday, 11/1 (office open M-F 9-4:30). You will need this to complete your final version, due on Wednesday, 11/9.

Week 6: The haunted city

(M) 10/31 – Pioneer Square walking tour
This class is not required, but those who attend will receive extra credit. We will meet at Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle for a walking tour of the ghost landscapes of our city. Please meet at north end of Occidental Park on S. Washington @ 2:15PM (30 minutes from campus via bus #72 or #73 to Pioneer Station)

Readings
Waterlines website (http://www.burkemuseum.org/waterlines)

(W) 11/2: The haunted city
We continue our discussion of how a city is “haunted” - by its past, but also by its possible futures.  Look at how we access that in different ways, both as residents and as scholars.

Readings
Mofokeng, Santu. 2005. The Black Albums, Granta 92: 215-233.

Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2002. The Visible and the Invisible: Remaking African Cities, Under Siege: Four African Cities. 23-44.  

Week 7: The security city

(M) 11/7: The security city, part 1
Along with trade and religion, security is considered a major function of urban forms. We look here at the violent origins of cities and the ways walls and fortifications may have created the first cities and how they shaped city life.

Readings

Ferguson, R.B., 2006. Archaeology, cultural anthropology, and the origins and intensifications of war. In: Arkush, E.N., Allen, M.W. (Eds.),                                 The Archaeology of Warfare. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 469–523.

Lau, George F., 2011. Fortifications as Warfare Culture: the Hilltop Centre of Yayno (Ancash, Peru), AD 400–800. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(3): 419–48.

(W) 11/9: The security city, part 2
September 11 2001 and the US invasion of Iraq each had profound impacts on the way urban security is imagined today.  Here we explore how these two events are reshaping the ways we live in cities.  We ask whether the current experience of fear in the city is new or whether it is simply the escalation of a problem common to all urban existence.

Readings
Low, Setha, 2001. The Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear, American Anthropologist 103(1): 45-58.

Hills, Alice, 2010. The Unavoidable Ghettoization of Security in Iraq, Security Dialogue 41(3): 301-321.

Assignment

  Opinion Paper (final version) due. Bring print out of your paper to class, stapled to your first draft with peer review comments included.

Week 8: The expanding city

(M) 11/14: The expanding city, part 1
Look at how we locate and define the edges of city, and how we understand the ways cities grow. Is the process of urban growth organic or mechanical, planned or chaotic? 

Readings
Neuwirth, Robert. 2006. Preface: Out of the Shadows, and Prologue: Crossing the tin roof boundary line in Shadow Cities: A billion squatters, a new urban world. New York: Routledge, xi-xiv, 22.

Robert Neuwirth “shadow cities” TED talk

Wainaina, Binyavinga, 2005. My Nairobi, National Geographic Interactive.

(optional) The Places We Live, Jonas Bendiksen, photo essay on slums with sound/narrative  

(W) 11/16: The expanding city, part 2
Did ancient cities have slums? Was suburbia and urban sprawl always part of the larger urban landscape? We’ll look at archaeological evidence of how cities grow, and shrink.

Readings
Smith, Michael E., 2010. Sprawl, Squatters and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(2): 229–53.

Karskens, Grace 2001. Small things, big pictures: new perspectives from the archaeology of Sydney’s Rocks neighborhood. In The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray, eds. pp. 69-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Week 9: The feral city

(M) 11/21: The feral cities
Is it possible for cities to go wild? Look at current concerns within security circles that some world cities risk descending into complete chaos, and connect this thinking to older ideas about the threat that cities pose.

Readings
Norton, Richard. 2003. Feral Cities, Naval War College Review. LVI(4): 97-106.

Assignment
Research Paper (draft) due (click here for details). Print out and bring to class for peer review. Your paper with peer and instructor                             comments will be returned to you in class on 11/30.

(W) 11/23 – No class (day before Thanksgiving)

Week 10-11: Dead cities/future cities

(M) 11/28: Dead city, part 1
If cities are living things, they can also die – or be killed? Have past cities really died? Can cities be lost? Who finds them? We’ll examine the famous “dead” city of Angkor Wat and explore theories and the evidence of its death in comparison to other supposedly dead and lost cities.

Readings
Fletcher R, Penny D, Evans D et al., 2008. The water management network of Angkor, Cambodia. Antiquity 82: 658-70.

Hendrickson, Mitch, 2010. Historic routes to Angkor: development of the Khmer road system (ninth to thirteenth centuries AD) in                              mainland Southeast Asia. Antiquity 84: 480-496.

(W) 11/30: Tour of city photography collection at the Henry Gallery (optional, 5 points extra credit if you attend)

Meet at the lobby of the Henry Gallery for a tour of urban photography. We may split into two groups, since the study room can only                       accommodate 2 4people at once. Others can browse current exhibits in the Henry’s galleries

(M) 12/5: Dead city, part 2
Continue our discussion by exploring how and why cities become the targets of violence. Explore the new logic of urban warfare and urban growth. Your Research Paper with peer and instructor comments will be returned to you in class.

Readings
Coward, Martin, 2004. Urbicide in Bosnia, Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 154-171.

Weizman, Eyal, 2004. Strategic Points, Flexible Lines, Tense Surfaces, and Political Volumes: Ariel Sharon and the Geometry of                                  Occupation, Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 172-191.

Agier, Michel, 2002. Between War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee Camps, Ethnography 3(3): 317-341.

(W) 12/7: Future city roundtable
Roundtable discussion on the future of cities. Particpants include Margarat O'Mara (historian), Lesley Bain (architect/urban designer), Knute Berger (journalist/author) and Daniel Toole (architect/alley researcher).

Readings
            “Living Cities” entries

(Th) 12/8: Research Paper final version due, 4:30 PM
                            Print out your paper and staple it to your first draft with peer review comments. Drop in either Lape or Hoffman faculty mailbox,                                              Anthropology office, Denny Hall mezzanine.